Williams College President Morton Owen Schapiro is pleased to announce a $5 million gift from Edgar M. Bronfman ’50 to help extend need-blind admission to all international applicants to the college.

Last year Williams announced plans to admit qualified international students regardless of their families’ abilities to pay and to promise to meet 100 percent of their financial need for four years. Such need-blind admission previously was restricted to applicants from the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Financial aid funds for other overseas students was limited. International students currently comprise 7 percent of the undergraduate population at Williams.

1) Bill Wagner wrote that the College was moving back to need-awareness for internationals and, in a private e-mail, Jim Kolesar confirmed that the new rules would apply to all non US citizens confirmed that Williams will continue to treat Permanent Residents the same as US citizens. So, the people that have been most screwed by the changes over the last decade are applicants from Canada and the Caribbean. They started out as being treated just like US students and will now be treated just like students from China or Bulgaria. Harsh!

2) What does Edgar Bronfman ’50 think about all this? The Record ought to call him and find out. I assume that the College has handled all the accounting fairly. Bronfman’s donation is still sitting in the endowment, with its income dedicated toward international admissions. (Does anyone understand the details of how that works at Williams?) It is just that the income is not enough given the relentless rise in tuition.

Bronfman’s gift is only the latest in his and his family’s ongoing commitment to international exchange and understanding at Williams. Last year alone, the Bronfman Family Fund made it possible for 10 foreign students to attend the college and for four Williams students to study abroad.

Hmm. As always, the details would be interesting to know. Is the Bronfman Family Fund a complete separate non-profit from Williams? Does it give these scholarships every year?

“Edgar Bronfman shares with the college and trustees the dream of making Williams a truly international institution” Schapiro said. “His generous gift will help us endow our international scholarship program in perpetuity and guarantee that Williams remains a world-class institution.”

7 Responses to “In Perpetuity”

RE #1 — I think the author of the post should remove the snarky aside which has litle to do with the thesis of the post and directly refers to a current Eph.

And the interim president is most likely implementing a policy the majority of trustees have decided upon — perhaps taking advantage of the period between the tenures of two strong “permanent” Williams presidents.

Wait, All…. ALL non-U.S. citizens? There are plenty of Permanent Residents who attend this college, myself included.

Permanent residents, while we do not have the right to vote, the right to be elected in federal and state elections, the ability to bring family members to the United States, or eligibility for federal government jobs, still pay taxes on world-wide income (and all other taxes that U.S. citizens pay) and (in case of male permanent residents) are subject to conscription between 18-26 years of age.

I’m guessing they didn’t include U.S. Permanent residents under the “Non-U.S. citizen” category in that email, but that is one scary loophole for me to think about.

David– in response to your mail to Jim…
I’m pretty sure that currently, the college’s policy for the admission and financial aid of U.S. Permanent Residents are very similar if not identical to the policy for regular U.S. Citizens. It is the same case for most colleges in this country, I believe, probably because U.S. Permanent Residents directly pay their taxes to the U.S. government and the schools receive money from those taxes.

It’s not likely that a school like Williams is going to change that policy any time soon (I’m not even sure if they’re allowed to do so) but I also thought same would have applied to all other non-U.S. citizen students who were not labeled as “Internationals” before.